Mary Jane Elizabeth Darling

[Phoenix]

This is NOT the handcuff queen, but William George Hawkins' wife.

She was born 26 April 1877 (I had a copy of her birth certificate)

Her father was a sailor who died when she was tiny and her mother remarried to Thomas Morgan.
Here she is in 1881:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...68?pId=6599500

and 1891:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...2?pId=12650489

She married William George in 1897 from 2 Wingfield St:
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/reco...2F00190992%2F2

and her sister Maud was a witness.

The first baby, Mabel, was born in 1901, but Mabel and Mary are both invisible on the 19011 census.

Her next three children are born in Grays, Essex but by 1911, she is by herself in the Workhouse:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...9?pId=53205426

Then a gap of eighteen years, until she turns up at her husband's inquest to take a pound from the poor box.

William died 8 June 1929, and she administered his estate 6 September 1929, and their sons 23 November 1929:

https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageview...141?pId=886475

And then she disappears....

I looked for Mary J born 26 April 1877 on the 1839 and found this:

https://www.findmypast.co.uk/transcr...3/1733J/016/38

Mary J Baker married to Edward Baker, a ferry away from Essex.

And this:

Marriages Sep 1929

Baker Edward Hawkins Gravesend 2a 2221
Hawkins Mary J Baker Gravesend 2a 2221

So, did she waste no time in marrying someone she might have been shacked up with for years? Or is this a pure coincidence?